Below is the official transcript and audio recording of The SEO Drewsletter, an Amazon Alexa Skill for the latest digital marketing trends and SEO news. To listen to The SEO Drewsletter on your Alexa device, simply enable The SEO Drewsletter, and ask Alexa: “What’s my flash briefing?”
Introduction
What’s up, everyone? Welcome to the latest addition of The SEO Drewsletter, your dedicated Alexa Skill for the latest SEO and digital marketing news. I’m Drew Marlier, your local SEO Skillionaire, and this is The SEO Drewsletter for the week:
From Marketing Land:
60 Minutes segment: Google is a monopoly without question
Google was featured on 60 Minutes last weekend, and the program asks: “How Did Google Get So Big?” The answer the interviewees generally give is: by engaging in illegal manipulation of search results in an effort to defeat competitors and promote its own content.
You can check out the 60 MInutes segment on Google right here.
Google declined to be interviewed on camera, but he offers several prepared statements, including that the company “has many competitors including Amazon and Facebook [and that] it does not make changes to its algorithm to disadvantage competitors.
From Google & Search Engine Land:
Google Trends gets updated with new features and design elements
Google Trends updated this week with “new features, simpler navigation, and more ways to explore data and stories around one of the world’s biggest journalistic datasets.”
Here are the updates for Google Trends:
- A revamped Trending searches section, showing what is trending in search right now, both daily and minute-by-minute.
- A newly-designed section where you can see Google Trends data stories curated by the News Lab team.
- Easy access to Year in Search data going back to 2001, so you can see how search interest has changed over time.
- New infographic types, such as an intensity map to compare different topics in more meaningful ways.
From Google:
Taking Action Against Scammers
Google announced this week that they are taking additional steps to take action against scammers, specifically companies that take advantage of small business owners.
Here are the steps they specifically noted on their blog post:
- Taking legal action against some specific companies in order to send a message to other scammers out there
- Developing new automated and manual techniques to better identify Google accounts tied to scam efforts
- Creating a new tool that lets business owners report scammy practices and policy violations, and provide the specific information needed for us to take action against these third parties.
- Providing resources and education to local small business organizations and the partners we work with through our Get Your Business Online program, so they can empower their communities to identify, prevent, and report scams
- Launching the Google My Business Partners program
From Search Engine Roundtable:
Google Removed “Don’t Be Evil” From Code Of Conduct
A somewhat bigger policy change that’s got a lot of people talking this week is that Google has taken the motto “Don’t Be Evil” out of their code of conduct.
“Don’t Be Evil” was a motto that has been ingrained in Google since the early 2000s with Paul Buchheit, which earlier Googlers held onto tightly.
Now, instead of the code of conduct starting with the phrase, now it ends with “And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right—speak up!”
Other digital marketing tidbits:
- Stumbleupon has announced that it will be shutting down on June 30.
- Google announced YouTube Music and YouTube Premium
- Bank of America’s AI assistant is ready to help with your finances
Conclusion
That wraps up The SEO Drewsletter for this week. If you’ve enjoyed this Alexa Skill, please leave a review—I’ll be happy to give a shoutout for any reviews that I get. Please also visit drewmarlier.com for the official transcript of The SEO Drewsletter, which will include all links to all stories and articles that were shared.
As always, thanks for listening, and we’ll Drew it again next week!